


Mask Upon My Face

by Jamae_ri



Series: Heal Me [1]
Category: TWICE (Band), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 13:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14333031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamae_ri/pseuds/Jamae_ri
Summary: 13-year-old Myoui Mina, miraculously survives an accident that kills her mother. Reeling from a heartbreakingly painful loss, Mina sees no other option but to retreat into herself. Scarred by the accident, disturbed by schoolmates who don’t know how to deal with her, and tormented above all else by her longing for her mother, she clings to the one thing that seems to be able to shield her from the chaos: her mask.For the next five years nothing seems to matter anymore … until the day Ong Seungwoo shows up in her life.Seungwoo is a world-famous male model who has only ever wanted to be normal, even though his mother has always pushed him to become a high-profile and extremely successful performer. Though it isn’t easy to leave everyone and everything he knows behind, Seungwoo is determined to enroll in high school. More than anything, he wants a break from the fast pace world of the rich and famous, wants to be around the people he loves. Only, he never expected to meet someone like Mina—or to be instantly consumed by their incredible chemistry and connection.





	Mask Upon My Face

_"Everyone has to weather a storm, but what makes everyone different is how they hang in there."_

...

  
Everyone has to weather a storm, but what makes everyone different is how they hang in there. The words ring in her mind, memories of her mother's gentle smile and warm embrace making her long for those simpler times. This is her mantra; the simple chant she'd heard her mother say years ago, the words she uses to remind herself to keep going.

Her lunch tray lay on the floor at her feet her uneaten meal scattered in chunks around her. The cafeteria, which was always noisy, was eerily silent. Everyone was looking at her.

"Well? Aren't you going to pick it up?"

Mina doesn't bother glancing at the girl who'd purposefully tripped her, she just complies. Bending down she turns the tray over and begins cleaning up the mess picking up the food with her hands.

Mina is used to this. Being bullied had become an everyday ordeal for her, something that she had to overcome daily.

Today, it was just another day, thankfully it was already half over. Just a few more hours to go. Her heart knocks against the wall of her chest, anxiety making its presence known once again. Just clean this up, she thinks to herself, just hurry up and clean this up and then you can go hide for the rest of lunch period.

Just as Mina is gathering her spilled milk bottle a pair of sneakers come into view and before she can think about it one of the shoes shoots forward sending her tray and its contents flying across the floor. Mina winces. She doesn’t dare look up, doesn’t need to. She already knows who is standing before her. Kang Daniel; the second person who hated her more than anything on the planet. The first being her own sister.

“Get up.”

His voice is cold, scary, holding no trace of the kind and gentle lilt he used to posses. Mina trembles.

“Get up!” he shouts.

She complies, standing on shaky legs, hugging her arms to herself as she faces her tormentor.

“I don’t ever want to see you in front of me again. Trash doesn’t belong in the cafeteria. Now get out.”

Mina walks slowly out of the cafeteria. Someone manages to throw a bowl of soup at her just before she’s out the door and it spills all over her left shoulder. The crowd in the lunchroom burst into laughter and when the door is closed Mina runs. She runs as fast as she can, her legs pounding on the floor below her, her lungs burning with every breath. She runs past her class room and up the stairs to the old girls bathroom, the one the school stopped caring to maintain. She runs until she is safe inside the old stall farthest from the door.

 

...

 

“ **Mom, I need to talk to you about something** ,” Ong Seungwoo calls out to his mother who is too busy on the phone to notice her son.

She walks to the other side of the room where a bundle of clothes lay scattered on a loveseat and she turns to the stylist placing a hand on the end of her cellphone as she calls her over, “ **He needs something new, something that will get the Directors attention, something blue, a Cobalt Blue.** ”

She places the phone back to her ear, “Yes Kim Tae Kyun-ssi I’m still here. Listen, Seungwoo is a nominee for the Model of the Year and Breakout Star, I want to have a photoshoot to commemorate his win…” She pauses as the photographer on the other line gets in a few words, “I know he hasn’t won yet Tae Kyun-ssi but he will you just wait. And when he does I want these photos up on all billboards, all magazines-”

“ **Mom** ,” Seungwoo interrupts her and she waves a hand at him hush him up.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking, so set it up for me will you and then give me a call. Okay… You’re an absolute doll… Yes, we will be there.”

She finally hangs up meeting Seungwoo’s eyes, “ **You were saying something hon?** ”

Seungwoo opens his mouth but before anything can come out his mother's assistant jumps in taking hold of his mothers elbow to get her attention.

“ **Sorry to interrupt you Sam,** ” His mothers assistant walks up to them, using Seungwoo’s english name to cut him off, “ **but Mrs. Ahn, Anna Wintour is here.** ”

Seungwoo’s mother's eyes open wide and he sees his chance fly out the window. She’s in beast mode now. Her target: Anna Wintour. Her goal: to get her son on the cover of Vogue.

The stylist runs up to them and hands his mother a set of clothes which she thrusts to him, “ **Okay, Seungwoo, hurry up and put these on so hair and make-up can do their finishing touches.** ”

“ **But mom, I really need to talk to you.** ”

“ **Seungwoo listen to me, Anna Wintour, the queen of Vogue, the woman with all the power in the modeling world, the woman who has the final say over every model who appears in the most influential magazine, is here. And she’s come as a favor to a very good mutual friend of ours.** ”

Seungwoo sighs, slouching his shoulders and placing the clothes on the make-up table, “ **Mom she’s just another person, like you and me-** ”

“ **She launched the career of Victoria's Secret model Karolina Kurkova by putting her on the cover at 16. This woman is the break we’ve been waiting for son. We’ve done fine on our own these last few years, enough that you’ve been nominated for the Model of the Year award. But this woman, she can take your career to a whole new level, one we’ve never even dreamed of. And she is here. Waiting for you. Wanting to see how you do in the shoot. Now, don't worry. Just be professional, okay?** ”

She pats her son on the cheek and turns to walk away. She won’t listen, she never does. But he has to try. Speak up now or forever hold your peace, he thinks to himself.

“ **I want to go to school!** ” He blurts. Everyone stops what they are doing to stare at him. His mother stops walking, she squares her shoulders before turning around to face him.

“Honey,” she says with what she considers a warm smile, it never reaches her eyes, “we've been through this.” Seungwoo can tell she isn’t happy by the sudden change in language. Her mother only used Korean on him when she figured she needed to work double in convincing him her way was the only way.

It confused him and more often than not he would have trouble understanding her so he would give up. That’s what she is hoping for here, Seungwoo realizes. She wants to confuse him, she wants to manipulate him in order to get him to comply to her wishes. But he won’t give up this time. This time he wouldn’t let her change his mind.

“ **Mrs. Ahn, I have your father on the phone-** ” His mother waves the assistant away. Seungwoo cranes his neck staring after the assistant as she conjures up an excuse as to why his mother couldn’t take her own father's call.

“There is no reason for you to go to school, going to school would take valuable time out of your day, that’s why we have a tutor on the road with us.”

“ **But mom-** ”

“Seungwoo,” She walks up close to him grabbing the long white sleeved shirt from the table where he had left it and helps him out of his shirt and into the new one, “Right now we have exciting things on the table. Modeling contracts, runway shows, appearances on talk shows all over the world and even a movie deal…”

Seungwoo shrugs into the shirt as his mother picks up a simple gold filled chain with a feather pendant and 2 tiger eye brown beads off the table and slings it over his head, “Right now you have opportunities any kid your age can only dream of.”

“ **Yeah but I still think it would be a good idea to take a break you know, catch a breather. I think going to school could help-** ”

“All our hard work is finally paying off, we are finally becoming someone Seungwoo, isn’t that what you want? For the world to know your name? Taking a break now would kill all of the opportunities and any hopes of a come back- ever. Now finish getting ready, I don’t want to keep her waiting any longer.”

Seungwoo watches helplessly as his mother walks away.

She’ll never listen. She never has, she never will. Everything in her world revolved around fame and fortune, being known and wanted. Seungwoo was sick of it. He hated it, the attention, the sleepless nights, the loneliness only he seemed to be aware of. He wanted to go home. He wanted to see his grandparents.

Taking a look at his surroundings Seungwoo gives himself an ultimatum; Escape this life now or forever hold your peace.

 

...

 

Mina turns on the faucet, staring at her reflection in the dull mirror. The mirror is scratched her reflection all but barely visible. She can see her silhouette and the dark stain on the side of her shirt from where someone had thrown their lunch at her.

Tears threaten at the back of her eyes but she doesn’t let them out. She never lets them out. She had learned long ago that crying and feeling sorry for herself didn’t help with anything. In the end her mother was still dead, her sister still hated her, her dad still didn’t know how to raise his girls and the school still saw her as a monster.

Because that is what she is. A monster.

Mina takes off her shirt and soaks the stain under hot water, rubbing harder than she knows she needs to.

Fifteen minutes later she has removed as much of the stain as possible but now her shirt is all wet. And now the bell has rung. Time to get back to class. She puts her shirt on and exits the bathroom, stopping by her gym locker to get the extra shirt she kept stashed there. Ruined shirts weren’t out of the ordinary. Mina has learned to be prepared for almost anything.

Back in the classroom she sits in her desk, the desk farthest from the front of the class and the other students. Each table is set up in pairs and as the kids start filing into the room all the other seats begin to get occupied. All except the one next to Mina.

 

...

 

“ **Attention all passengers. This is the pre-boarding announcement for flight 85B bound for Incheon, South Korea. We are now inviting those passengers with small children, and any passengers requiring special assistance, to begin boarding at this time. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. Regular boarding will begin in approximately fifteen minutes time. Thank you.** ”

Seungwoo glances up from behind the magazine he’d been ‘reading’. Truthfully he had just been using it as a cover, he always seemed to forget that he wasn’t a nobody anymore. More and more people were recognizing him every year. The last thing he needed now was someone recognizing him and posting all over social media that he was at the airport to South Korea. The country he hadn’t been to in five years.

But Seungwoo was more than ready to go back home. More than ready to see his grandparents, his aunt...

“ **Attention all passengers. This is the pre-boarding announcement for flight 85B bound for Incheon, South Korea. Your departure gate is now changed to gate 23. This is the last call for passengers with small children, and any passengers requiring special assistance, to begin boarding at this time. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. Regular boarding will begin in approximately ten minutes time. Thank you.** ”

Seungwoo sighs, this is really happening. In just ten minutes he would be on his way home away from the fast paced life his mother had spent ten years creating for him. He wonders if he will miss it.

A group of teenage girls walks by him and he notices their gazes keep returning to him, they whisper and he catches a piece of their conversation.

‘ **It’s him! It’s really him!** ’ One whispered

‘ **Do you really think so? He isn’t looking so glamorous, maybe he just looks like Sam Ong.** ’

Seungwoo looks down at his blue K.Swiss sweater and light gray sweats. He didn’t think he looked so bad, unless they counted the few stains here and there from his barbeque breakfast. Seungwoo clears his throat and pushes the dark sunglasses farther up his nose and stands. Gathering his bag he discards the magazine in the nearest bin and starts walking to the boarding gate.

The sooner he could get on the plane the better he would feel. As he walks toward the gate a few people look in his direction and he lowers his head. He passes a small book store selling newspapers in the front and almost fall over a little girls suitcase. He apologizes and runs to the newspaper stand snatching a paper from the middle row and opening it clumsily so that some of them fall to the floor.

“ **Hey if you want to read the newspaper you need to pay for it buddy!** ” The store clerk, a white haired old man in a mustard yellow button up barked.

Seungwoo fishes in his pocket and pulls out a twenty dollar bill, throwing it on the counter and picking up the scattered pages until he finds the page that caught his attention.

The headline read ‘ **Mom's doing damage control** ’ and on the cover, a picture of him. The sub text read ‘ **From Model of the Year to temper tantrums. Breakout Star Sam Ong goes awol leaving Anna Wintour in the dust.** ’

He was supposed to meet Anna Wintour two days ago instead he had run from the photoshoot back home where he packed his bags and stayed the night in a different hotel where his mother wouldn't find him and convince him what he was planning was wrong. He'd needed to take initiative for once in his life and he was proud to have done so but after seeing what the media was saying about him he begins to wonder if he had gone about it the wrong way.

Seungwoo is reading the article about his disappearance when a hand grabs his wrist, startling him, “What on Earth do you think you're doing?”

“ **Mom?!** ” His mother stands before him looking as calm and collected as she could muster. But Seungwoo knew there was a fire brewing just beneath the surface.

“Come on let’s go,” her grip tightens as she begins pulling him back the way she’d come.

“ **Wait, how did you find me?** ”

She stops, nostrils flaring, “Do you think I wouldn't notice a $6,000 charge for plane tickets to South Korea? Are you insane?!”

She begins to pull again, “ **Mom stop, I’m going, I’ve already made up my mind, okay?** ”

“Seungwoo, I have got a catastrophe on my hands that affects both of our reputations, you can’t just run away from your responsibilities.”

“ **I’m running away? You mean like when you ran away five years ago without letting grandma and grandpa know?** ”

She freezes eyes wide and mouth agape, “Seungwoo, I am not going to argue with you about this, we are going back now and you’re going to hold a public conference where you will apologize for your behavior, now let’s go.’

She begins to pull him along once again but this time he yanks his arm from hers causing her to stumble.

“ **I’m not going with you.** ” Seungwoo stands firm. His voice is just above an audible whisper, only loud enough for her to hear.

She clenches her jaw, “Seungwoo, you will destroy your dream-”

“ **No mom! Being famous isn’t what I want. It’s what you want, everything we’ve done in the past five years was all about you and making you happy. Well I want to be happy too. I want to go to school and be something more than just a pretty face or an acne add on some billboard in some highway that no one really pays attention to.** ”

People around them begin to stair and Seungwoo takes his mother's hand and leads her to a quiet corner near the floor to ceiling windows where he hopes they can have a conversation in peace.

“Look mom I get it,” Seungwoo runs a trembling hand through his hair, he switches to Korean as more bystanders begin looking their way. The last thing Seungwoo wants now is to act like to reckless teenager the media was making him out to be.

“You’re trying to make a living, trying to keep the future visible but I need space. I need to breathe, I need to be around people who want to be with me because they love me and not because they know being seen with me will give them popularity points.”

“Seungwoo, I'm running New York's top model agency, our name has only just made it to the public's interest, are you willing to let all of that go for some delirious hope that everything will get better if you can find people who care about your interests? I’m going to tell you something son this world wasn’t built for hopefuls. It was built for the strong minded for those who take what they want whether they need it or not and the weak? The weak are torn to shreds in the process.”

“I’m not delirious-”

“Honey I care about you!” she lays a hand on either side of his face, “I don’t give you my attention all the time. But I do love you, you know that.”

“I know mom,” He takes her wrist into his hands, “somewhere deep in your heart, in the darkest corner imaginable, in some lonely room that you haven’t visited in a long time, I know you still care about me,” he takes her hands off his face, they fall at her sides, “But maybe once, you could agree with me on this. Mom I missed out on being a normal teenager, I don’t even know what being normal is-  I don’t even have any friends. I gave up my life so that I could be who you wanted me to be, where you wanted me, when you wanted me there. I've fit into your life, and now I just can’t do it anymore. I’m exhausted.”

She sighs and reaches out for him once more, but he blocks her. He knows what she is doing. She’s done it his whole life. Whenever something came up, whenever he didn’t want to do something she insisted he do she would always treat him this way. She always reached out to him, tried showing the affection he’d been asking for all along. But this time he wouldn’t fall for her manipulations. This time he would be strong.

“Son, I know that you're upset, okay I get it. But people like us can't afford incidents like this. You disappeared out of the blue, your schedule is still full, people are still waiting on you. This was your chance to show Anna Wintour and the industry the young educated young man that you are, not some melodramatic teen.”

Seungwoo shakes his head, “Mom don’t you hear me? Can’t you understand what I’m saying? Even when your son is plastered on every newspaper in New York,” Seungwoo waves the pages in front of her face, she cocks her head, “it's like you still can't see me. Do you see anything that is happening around you? Do you know why your last assistant quit?”

He waits on her and is met with silence, “It’s because she found out her father has cancer. She left to go take care of him. Do you even know what’s going on with your own father? Do you know he’s had two strokes in the last week alone?” He doesn’t let her answer, “Of course you wouldn’t know, because you don’t even answer him when he calls!”

Silence follows and his mother only stares at him. Seungwoo scoffs shaking his head he turns to stare out the window.

“ **Attention all passengers. This is the boarding announcement for flight 85B bound for Incheon, South Korea. Passengers please make your way to gate 23. We will begin boarding at this time. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. Thank you.** ”

Seungwoo glances up at the speaker overhead and to his mother, “I should get going.”

He begins to walk away and she calls out to him, “Seungwoo, you can't just run away.”

He stops, “I’m not running away mom. I ran away five years ago, with you. Now I am running towards something else, running back home, back to the family that you had no qualms abandoning. I don’t know about you, but I want to see my family. And I want to officially say goodbye to my father...”

His mother crosses her arms over her chest and he can see he still hasn’t gotten to her. He doesn’t believe he ever will.

“ **This is the final boarding call for all passengers booked on flight 85B to Incheon, South Korea. Please proceed to gate 23 immediately. The final checks are being completed and the captain will order for the doors of the aircraft to close in approximately five minutes time. I repeat. This is the final boarding call for all passengers booked on flight 85B to Incheon, South Korea. Please proceed to gate 23 immediately. Thank you.** ”

“ **Take care mom, I love you.** ” He stands closer to her, gripping the back of her neck softly and leaning forward to place a kiss on her forehead. Despite their arguing he wouldn’t leave this place without telling her he loved her. The last time he’d argued with a parent he slammed the door in their face and that same night the police showed up at the door with news of their death.

Seungwoo slings his bag higher on his shoulder, there is a small migraine playing at his temples and he knows it will only worsen as he has the next nineteen hours on the plane to think about what just happened. But a part of him was proud.

Proud of himself, proud that he had finally stood up to his mother, proud that he had finally taken the first step towards life. This was a good decision, he would show her. He would show everyone that he knew what he was doing.

...

  
Language Key:

Speaking Korean

**Speaking English**

 

####  _Author's Note (03/07/2018):_

####  _I have noticed that most of the kpop stars raised in the US or Canada(and any other english speaking country) change their names(probably to make it easier on the english speakers who might not know how to prounounce their given names) so for the purpose of this story I have given Seungwoo and his mother english names that they use while they live in America. Seungwoo is known as Sam Ong and his mother (played by Kim Hye-soo) is Susan Ahn. Also they have different last names because Korean women keep their family names even after their marriage but their children take the father's surname._


End file.
